two more big fights have been announced for UFC 291 in Salt Lake City, Utah on July 29th, with Tony Ferguson returning to fight Bobby Green, while Michael Chiesa will go up against Kevin Holland.
The 39-year-old Ferguson heads into his fight with Green at a stage in his career where some have suggested it’s time for him to retire, having now suffered five losses in a row.
The former interim title challenger last victory was over Donald Cerrone back in 2019 and took his winning streak at the time to 12 fights, but since then it’s been a steep decline, starting with a TKO loss to Justin Gaethje in 2020.
Two losses on the scorecards to Charles Oliveira and Beniel Dariush followed, while in 2022 he was KO’d by Michael Chandler and then submitted by Nate Diaz.
Adding to his woes, Ferguson was arrested in Hollywood and charged with driving under the influence earlier this month after crashing his pick-up into two cars outside a nightclub, resulting in his vehicle rolling onto it’s side.
Now he’ll try to push forward in a more positive direction against the 36-year-old Green, who headed into his last fight against Jared Gordon coming off back-to-back losses via strikes, having been TKO’d in the first round by Islam Makhachev and KO’d by Drew Dober in the second.
Unfortunately Green’s fight against Gordon didn’t go according to plan either, with an accidental clash of heads resulting in the fight being declared a no-contest.
Meanwhile, joining them on the main card of UFC 291 will be a welterweight fight between Michael Chiesa and Kevin Holland.
For the 35-year-old Chiesa this will be his first fight in a year-and-a-half after suffering back-to-back losses against Vicente Luque and Sean Brady in 2021 that halted a four-fight winning streak at 170lbs.
During Chiesa’s absence from the Octagon his next opponent Holland has been far more active, with the 30-year-old having gone 3-2 during that period.
Along the way he picked up wins over Alex Oliveira and Tim Means, before being finished by both Khamzat Chimaev and Stephen Thompson, while most recently he got back on track with a KO finish of Santiago Ponzinibbio last month.
These two fights complete a UFC 291 main card that will be headlined by a ‘BMF’ title fight between Dustin Poirier and Justin Gaethje, while Jan Blachowicz vs. Alex Poreira serves as the co-main event and Paulo Costa vs. Ikram Aliskerov also features on what looks like a stacked card from top to bottom.
